DSpace at VNU: Perspectives on Teacher Professionalism: A Review of Literature

Besides professional knowledge subject matter knowledge, English teacher standards pay higher attention to professional attributes such as developing relationships, communicating, unders

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Perspectives on Teacher Professionalism:

A Review of Literature

Duong Thu Mai*

Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, VNU University of Languages and International Studies,

Pham Van Dong, Cau Giay, Hanoi, Vietnam

Received 06 May 2016 Revised 28 November 2016; Accepted 29 November 2016

Abstract: Teachers, more than any other concerned people, often stand in the centre of the ever

on-going debates in advancing education quality In recent decades, when the need for a professionalization agenda of the teaching job has been made urgent in every education context, teacher professionalism (TP) is among the most frequently mentioned dimension It is impossible

to name any professionalization effort without describing what the corresponding teaching professionals look like In Vietnam, recent years have also witnessed a rapid increase of studies and attention for teacher‟ knowledge and competence while the local literature on this issue is still rather limited By presenting the existing perspectives of TP along with practical examples before discussing them in the light of major education goals, this article aims to provide a more systematic conceptualization of this construct and its relatives, taking into account the well studied theories and practices by world education researchers, to provide a reference source for concerned policy makers, teacher education curriculum developers, teacher trainers, researchers, and student researchers in education

Keywords: Teacher professionalism, teacher competence, teacher education

1 Definitions of key terms

Professionalization indicates all the

measures to improve the status of the teaching

job and the teachers This definition is agreed

by many authors, namely Ballantyne who says

it is the “drive towards creating teachers as

professionals” [1] or Zeichner [2], who argues

that professionalization is the most influential

agenda to affect teacher education

Professionalization as such is realized in a

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Email: duongthumai@yahoo.com

number of dimensions, one of which is professionalism

In the past, one popular definition of

professionalism referred to the methods a

professional group of people use to enhance their status and working conditions When

applied for teachers, professionalism indicates the methods they and other educational authorities use to elevate the low status which has been characterizing the teaching job for many years In contrast, most authors nowadays operationalize it as the contents of

professionalization or “the knowledge and

competence equipped for teachers in order to improve the quality, conduct, demeanour and

standards” of teachers‟ job [3: 152] More

simply, it implies everything teachers need to

know and be able to do In this overview,

professionalism means the requirements of

teachers’ knowledge and/or competence and is

considered a versatile, ever-changing

concept [4]

In recent decades, a professionalization

agenda of the teaching job has been made

urgent in mostly every education context,

resulting or corresponding to the popularity of

statements on TP It is impossible to name any

professionalization effort without describing

what the corresponding teaching professionals

look like In Vietnam, however, such

descriptions are still rare In response, this

article will discuss professionalism from

outstanding research perspectives, with the

variety of opinions being obtained from key

researchers and theorists in the field of teacher

education before being thematically classified

and supported with examples from both quality

peer-reviewed journals and authorized

governmental reports across countries

2 Research perspectives of TP

The following sections classify TP

perspectives according to their major

requirements for teachers, and their time order

of prevalence

2.1 Knowledge-based teacher professionalism

The classification of requirements for

teachers according to their knowledge(s) is

described herebelow under the umbrella term of

“knowledge-based approach” in teacher

professionalization These are the most

traditional requirements for teachers

The focus on subject matter knowledge

One crucial requisite for teachers is the

mastery of subject matter knowledge Zeichner

[2: 4] referred to this trend in teacher education

as the “Academic Tradition”, which focuses on

“the importance of disciplinary knowledge for

pre-service teachers, gained through a classical liberal arts education combined with an apprenticeship in schools” However, problematically, the emphasis on subject-knowledge is synonymous with teachers‟ inconfidence about their competence and efficiency, their lack of coherence and consistence with each other, and their limited catering for students‟ needs This is because their professional knowledge is not comparable

to their subject matter knowledge base An example of the focus on subject knowledge was provided by Shulman [5] As described, 950 points of the total 1000 points in the 1875 California Teachers Examination deal with subject matter and only 50 points were given for the questions on Teaching knowledge and skills In other words, the weighing for teaching/pedagogical knowledge is minimal This trend emerged in the US at the time teacher professionalization was toward mass public education and the educational goal was mainly socialization of education

The focus on teaching skills

Resulting from the increasing significance

of accountability in the professionalization agenda, clearer national and local requirements for teachers in what they do in the class have been established, especially regarding their ability to make judgments As opposed to the first trend, most academic literature in teacher education in the world more recently reflects

the higher emphasis on teaching skills, compared to and separated from that on subject knowledge The justifications are new

responsibilities and roles for teachers, indicating the functioning of new skills which should be cognitive-based rather than behavioristic, and calling for new dispositions for good teaching

When the focus moves to teaching skills, research skills and teacher commitment are popular requirements Teachers also need to collaborate even more in order to fulfill various new responsibilities for the students, and to individualize their teaching for different

students Therefore, processes, problem-solving

and field practices plus reflection are made

important contents in teacher standards and

teacher preparation, in the hope that they would

solve the inequality and injustice in education

[6] The problem with the pedagogy-based

orientation is these contents may be too specific

and unconnected [7] More seriously, the

acquired competences are often quantified,

differentiated and then qualified without little

consideration for teacher learning capacity

Many examples can be taken to illustrate

this trend The success of Finnish students in

PISA (Programme for International Student

Assessment) and international examinations, for

one example, has been attached with the strong

pedagogical competencies of teachers [8]

Besides professional knowledge (subject matter

knowledge), English teacher standards pay

higher attention to professional attributes (such

as developing relationships, communicating,

understanding legal documents) and

professional skills (establishing expectations,

positive attitudes to learning, keeping

disciplines, etc) For another example, the

following instrumental skills for teachers were

listed in the US in the 1980s [5]:

- Organizing the preparation and

presentation of lesson plans

- Evaluating

- Recognizing students‟ differences

- Being aware of cultures

- Understanding the youth

- Managing

- Understanding educational policies and

processes

Other practical examples of pedagogical

knowledge emphasis can be taken from Indian,

English and Australian teacher education [9]

Hardly anyone would say that subject matter

knowledge is sufficient for teachers It is even

mis-taken for granted as a common knowledge

every teacher must have

When the emphasis on these pedagogical

knowledge and skills is extreme; teachers are

no longer prerequisitely trained about the

subject they teach Moreover, surprisingly, not many of the well reported frameworks of teacher knowledge give sufficient care for both classroom management skills and knowledge management skills [10] Meanwhile, one remarkable feature of many teacher pedagogy knowledge frameworks is that they are still expressed in task-analysis behavioral statements such as “allocate time and turns”,

“praise and blame”, “ask questions”, etc [5: 9] The failure to capture contextual difficulties, the inadequate attention to teachers‟ emotion, the ignored or overemphasized role of reflection are among the key critiques Despite the drawbacks, thanks to the effects of these requirements in improving pedagogical skills, teachers are more concerned as professionals than ever before

A more balanced knowledge-based teacher education

Against the bias in favour of either subject knowledge or pedagogical skills, some researchers provide more balanced frameworks Evertson [11] mention in their meta-analysis of teacher education research a trend that teachers should be required to deepen their knowledge in

both the subject area, liberal arts and the knowledge/capacity about teaching

Furthermore, Shulman [5] [10] suggests teachers should not only be trained in either discipline knowledge or pedagogy Teacher education, on the other hand, must logically connect pedagogy to the specific subject knowledge, and provide the teacher candidates with courses in using their:

- content knowledge: the body (facts,

concepts, explanations, emphases, etc.) and organization of knowledge (such as via Bloom‟s taxonomy, Gagné‟s varieties of learning)

- pedagogical content knowledge:

including general pedagogical knowledge (the subject matter knowledge for teaching such as idea representations, analogies, examples, illustrations, models, frameworks, demonstrations, knowledge on student learning

and errors, etc.) and pedagogical content

knowledge (teachers‟ personal form of

professional knowledge which blends content

and pedagogy into ready instructions of each

unit or lesson)

- curricular knowledge: the knowledge

about programmes to apply the content

knowledge and pedagogical knowledge

(instructions, programme features, contexts,

instruction-assessment process, alternative

methods for instruction, etc.)

- other educational knowledge such as

knowledge of learners, education contexts,

education goals, perspectives, values and their

history

Although Shulman‟s framework for teacher

knowledge is well known for its completeness,

it still receives criticisms It is claimed to base

on rather theoretical knowledges Teacher‟s

personal development and knowledge of

educational outcomes are also not included in

the list The framework also seems to pioneer in

the quantification and limitation of TP, an

approach which may give rise to the omission

of the other rich elements of the teaching job

(contexts, ethics, emotions, etc.) [12] This

approach of listing the instrumental

requirements for teachers, however, has since

then been echoed by many authors, such as

Feiman-Nemser [13], and continues until the

year 2000 in the U.S., with the support of the

government for certain key elements in teacher

education [12] Teachers in England, Australia

and New Zealand are also encouraged to follow

similar restricted version of professionalism

The requirement for meta-knowledge in teacher

education

Resulting from a prominent teaching

philosophy dated for decades named

individualism, individual teachers are believed

to be sufficiently competent in teaching with

their subject knowledge The autonomously

prepared teachers make their own decisions

about how to implement curriculum innovations

and about which teaching methods to choose by

themselves in their classrooms The

development of professional knowledge is often conducted via workshops by offsite experts on unrelated topics to the classrooms of the trained

teachers This requirement, or autonomous professionalism, is apparent in many teacher

education systems In England, besides other countries, professional autonomy is one of the four aspects usually associated with professionalism (besides strong knowledge base, commitment to the job, strong individual and collective identities) Also, teacher professional autonomy has been reported as a major trend of TP in OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development) countries in the early period [14]

Mean while, the overwhelming increase in the required subject knowledge amount, the wide variety of pedagogical approaches available for their choice and the involvement

of many other stakeholders in education have led this autonomous teaching philosophy to change dramatically Occupational heteronomy characterizes the teaching profession, rather than the traditional autonomy [12] On discussing the variety of new teaching approaches and social responsibilities,

Hargreaves [3] contrasts the old, autonomous,

individualistic, and restricted TP with new,

professionalism Teacher autonomy is no

longer suitable to teachers who have to teach things they have not been trained, so teachers

should be required to collaborate

A good example for teacher collaborative professionalism can be taken from Irish teacher education, where teachers are expected to adopt

a more interactive relationship with students, teachers, parents and other stakeholders In the classroom subject teachers often work alongside special assistants and learning support teachers Outside of the classroom, teachers also liaise with a range of other staff about school development, school evaluations and special education needs of students, among other areas [15] Another appropriate illustration is the case of Finland, where the modern TP can be described in terms of

individuals who: (i) appreciate the role of active

personal learning as a professional tool; (ii)

cooperate, interact and communicate well; (iii)

see themselves as both individuals and society

member, and (iv) devote to their work [16]

2.2 Competence-based Teacher Professionalism

Competence is a newer concept than

knowledge in education According to Zeichner

[2], the 1960s-1970s marks the impressive

appearance and development of

competence-based/performance-based teacher education in

the US All the previous versions of

professional rules do not seem to solve the

problems that the complex contexts of teaching

are creating Various versions of competencies

have been defined Authors base on different

values and political perspectives/dimensions to

create them There is a lack of a shared view of

occupational competence and a reliable

knowledge of teacher learning to construct

programmes In other words, agreement in the

most important contents for teacher

competences simply does not exist

Contemporary competence-based TP is a

typical case of multidimensionality, as reflected

below through different lenses

2.2.1 The components of competence

The components of competence are taken as

the first lens to look at different definitions of

competence-based TP Most contemporary

literature reveals that teacher competence

models should integrate the knowledge, skills,

and disposition teachers should apply in their

job; competence is the general umbrella term

for a major task of the job, while competencies

are often conceptualized as the more specific

responsibilities

If knowledge (such as subject matter

knowledge or knowledge of students) and skills

(such as pedagogical skills) are familiar in

knowledge-based TP, the emphasis on teacher

dispositions or attitudes into this concept is a

specialty of the competence-based era In

eastern countries such as Japan, Korea and

China, teachers were required to have certain

personalities in order to deal with the changes

in modern students‟ mental features; in Malaysia, the teachers must be dedicated to the national identity Teachers are believed to be active in the realization of the ideal society and the transformation of the society, with everything they possess (knowledge, skills, values, etc.) Despite all that, inadequate attention has been paid to the integration of this content into teacher education

To explain for the focus on disposition, a number of reasons have been named Hargreaves [3] considers that teaching is an emotional profession in which commitment, care, self-direction, etc are named as important attitudes Consequently, teachers always have

to face worries, fear, loneliness, uncertainties and other negative feelings in their relationships

at school and in conducting their tasks This is not to mention the need to cope with complex and diversified school environments

Many traits have been mentioned as important in teacher disposition One of the most complete discussions of teacher dispositions is given by Sockett [17], who claims that this highly complicated concept can

be interpreted from numerous perspectives Stable as they are, they cannot be equalized to

“personality traits” because they are conscious, cognitive, learnt and intentional actions People often reflect and judge themselves based on the intentionality of those acts A specific behavior will not lead to the same assumption of dispositions in different contexts Therefore, it

is impossible to explain actions based on dispositions, but it is possible to predict the tendency of actions When dispositions become virtues, i.e., when they are initiated by a person, realized with intrinsic motivation after severe self-opposition, the construct of dispositions can be framed for assessment in teacher education Sockett has also identified three relating domains of dispositions needed for teaching: character, intellect, and care, with the suggested components as below The variation

of dispositions in different times may result from changing educational goals

Table 1 Dispositions of teachers

Self-knowledge

Courage

Sincerity

Integrity

Trustworthiness

Endeavour (persistence,

perseverance, heed)

Trustfulness Accuracy Consistency Fairness and impartiality Clarity

Thoughtfulness Open-mindedness

Tolerance Tact Discretion Civility Receptivity Relatedness Responsiveness

The best example of the disposition trend in

Asia can be seen in Singaporean value-based

education and teacher education Teachers of

the 21st century are required to be competent in

disposition-based life skills such as flexibility

and adaptability, initiative and self-direction,

teamwork and collaboration, social and

cross-cultural skills, productivity and accountability,

leadership and responsibility Leadership and

management and personal effectiveness, which

are highly related to teachers‟ spiritual traits,

are even named as two of the three dimensions

in teacher competencies, besides professional

practice (National Institute of Education,

Teacher education of the 21st century) Shi [18]

states that in China, one of the cores of teacher

education according to the revised educational

laws is possessing good personality, moral

values and commitment to work in education

When it comes to discussing teachers‟

dispositions, many teacher education curricula

in the east introduce courses in the citizenships

of the country (such as Malaysia‟s Islamic

civilization, China‟ politics) in an effort to

reduce the local polarization of values and

improve the national spirit among the teachers

who are responsible for preparing the nations‟

new generations (Australia, Malaysia,

Philippines, China, etc.)

2.2.2 Political perspectives in defining

teacher competences/professionalism

Previous sections focus on research

perspectives of TP, while this section highlights

the reconceptualization of this term under

practical conditions

Definitions

In practical definitions of TP, among the

competing professionalism conceptions, the most noticeable difference is in terms of political management perspectives [4], between the democratic and social-contextual professionalism against the commercialized (also called the efficiency-based) one Behind both of these competing approaches, teacher education is believed to be a political issue [19], or the right policy is assumed to create good quality in teacher education Based on different education goals, the democratic professionalism emphasizes that social justice and equality should be the main aims: education should benefit everyone The commercialized professionalism, which is often designed by a small number of members in the teacher education field on behalf of many groups of stakeholders, emphasizes standards, output controls, market type mechanism, competition, etc Other features of the commercialized version include the focus on research and evidence

Social contextual professionalism

This trend is named the Developmental Tradition in teacher education by Zeichner [2] Besides the traditional requirements as above listed, in this democracy-focused era, teachers are required to have a knowledge of social justice, the skills to create social justice in the classroom and to train students on it, and the dispositions related to social justice, such as treating students fairly, caring for the underprivileged ones, etc…For example,

teachers should be able to teach students about

global problems and interactions Moreover, the

students in the modern world face a fast

changing society, and teachers should have the

knowledge, skills and attitudes to teach them to

adapt [20] Otherwise, teachers themselves

should be globally competent, dealing with

students of all types, races, religions, etc Never

has learner-centeredness been so popular as an

approach in education, in which students‟

individuality and personal role are highly

respected [18]

Some examples can be taken In China,

teachers are required to give up the traditional

teacher-centered approach and replace it with

the utmost care for learners‟ needs [18] The

National Council for Teachers of Mathematics

in the United States, for another example, has

organized their standards and principles for

effective teachers in several groups, the first of

which is Equity More critically than being

knowledge transferors, teachers are considered

agents of social transformation [12]

After the 2000s, teacher effectiveness must

be understood not only as outcome-related but

also in the influences of social contexts and

relationships, resulting in holistic version of TP

Grant [21] mentions the following skills of

effective teachers:

- Pedagogical skills: implementing

teaching strategies based on all

knowledge resources

- Reflection skills: analyzing,

researching, acting on

teacher-generated data based on goals, values,

assumptions

- Communication and collaboration skills

- Management skills to create learning

environments

- The ability to use technology as a

teaching-learning tool (to communicate,

to plan, to improve lessons, etc

Similar ideas were put forward by Collins

[9] and in Australia where effective teacher

preparation should include but do not limit to: a

variety of meaningful concepts and related

theories, and a variety of principles to examine, justify and change practices (such as ethics, research, culture, theories of human (children and adult) development, insights into diversity and inclusivity, experience in learning sites, and human learning practices and debates about them)

It‟s hard to neglect the issue of integrating modern technology in teacher education The boom of modern technology has impacted the training of teachers in almost every country, making mastery of technology a required competence in teacher professionality To teach effectively, to access the resource of knowledge, and to produce good outcomes in education, i.e students who have IT skills, teachers must be trained on and be competent in information literacy

This trend has been reflected thoroughly in China and Singapore where the use of ICT is one of the major core courses in educational studies In European countries such as Austria, France, in the US and Canada, ICT has become

a compulsory subject for student teachers since the early 1990s In England, ICT is not only a subject, but is practically embedded in the instruction of all subjects at teacher education schools and for professional development programmes to gain the maximum effect Teachers are not qualified in England and France if they do not meet a set of ICT standards for pre-service teacher education courses

As it is stated, the world has turned into an information age; teacher education cannot stay

in the industrial age

Commercialized professionalism

In this perspective, a (usually short) list of pre-specified and standardized teacher competencies is formed Teachers are to respond to the needs of individual students, and

to be more flexible on the choice of knowledge

to equip themselves and to apply to students Great attempts have been made to cut down on theoretical subjects and courses teachers need to learn at teacher education schools, lower

qualification is required from them, and more

flexible input criteria are set for the teacher

candidates/new teachers This tradition is

similar to the so named “social efficiency” one

by Zeichner [2]

School-based teacher education is a key

commercialized trend in teacher education,

involving the recruitment of subject knowledge

masters by schools due to the shortage of

officially qualified teachers Like in the

pre-professionalization stage, subject matter

knowledge is given priority over pedagogical

knowledge and dispositions Teachers are those

with strong subject knowledge and just need to

be trained at schools in the latter two contents

However, little training is provided on these

alternative courses [22] As an illustration,

England is the country with the strongest wave

of school-based teacher education in recent

years (32 alternative routes) [22] The 2002

Education Act of England has claimed one key

policy that schools are allowed to use and train

adults without certification for certain teaching

tasks These “paraprofessional” teachers can

work as teaching assistants, teacher trainees or

even advanced skill teachers In the US, some

examples of alternative teacher preparation

programmes are Teach for America (one of the

few clearly successful alternative programmes

of teacher education) and alternative-route

teacher education programmes [22, 23] In

California, for another example, teachers do not

need to complete a teacher education

programme or to be licensed before starting to

work at schools [23] Many teacher candidates

have already worked as full-time teachers, with

about 200 hours of formal instruction by

mentoring teachers In Finland, some schools

have been able to enjoy the decentralized

administration and take responsibility for

training their own teachers Other countries

with alternative teacher education (sometimes

named fast-tract programmes) include Chile,

Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, the Philippines, etc

While this alternative route to train teacher professionals appear to bring new winds to the situation of teacher shortage, and bring focus back to the used-to-be respected teacher autonomy and subject matter knowledge training for teachers [23], there is a question mark over the quality of teacher training in these programmes, the preparation contents for teacher candidates, and the kind of guidance they receive In order that the problems of alternative programmes can be avoided and that teacher professionalization is not undermined, collegial, the university-based teacher preparation which equips a teacher with many skills that schools cannot should still be the norm

As a concluding note for this section, based

on the political perspective, TP in the current days can be defined with an essentialist view, containing a short list of requirements for teachers or can be defined in a broad sense which enables it to reflect the most valued teacher education ideas in different period of times and the contexts of those ideas Most definitions of professionalism in the postmodern time have avoided the overemphasis on either extreme of democracy and commercialization The reliance on either extreme is considered ineffective as it neglects the advantages of the other

3 Summary and discussion

This paper has attempted to look at TP from different perspectives In the professionalization

of the teaching job, the concepts of professionalization have evolved in quite a systematic journey The different concepts of professionalism can be summarized in the following table:

Table 2 Perspectives on Teacher Professionalism Research perspectives of TP Political perspectives of TP (practical

reconceptualization of the research perspectives) Knowledge-based TP: requirements for a master in

subject matters, teaching skills, or a balance of them,

meta-cognitive knowledge (individual or collegial

professionalism)

Social contextual TP: requirements for being an agent

of social transformation (with competencies in ICT, communication skills, living skills, etc)

Competence-based TP: requirements for the

integration of knowledge, skills, and dispositions

Commercialized TP: a shortened list of requirements

To explain for this diversity, apparently

underlying the variation from one perspective to

another as above are different teaching-learning

philosophies and educational goals/outcomes

For one thing, research perspectives on the

requirements for teachers can be based on many

dimensions, such as student learning, teacher

learning, or society reconstruction [2] Many

different teaching methods are available with

the same purpose of improving student

learning As regards the roles for teachers and

students, either of them can be the centre of the

classroom In the teacher-centred class

prominent since the 1970s, knowledge was

typically presented to the learner in a role of “a

blank page” instead of a discovery-emphasized

approach and the basic teaching methods were

recitation or lecturing, along with other

monotonous sequence of note-taking,

question-and-answer Such approach is still challenging

the more newly developed and well-supported

student-centred teaching approach, which focus

on students‟ differences in needs, learning

styles, backgrounds, etc Besides, teaching

methods can also vary in the content focus,

from learning process to learning products In

the meantime, in terms of teacher learning, it is

believed that one could learn to become a

teacher through practical apprenticeship, and

one improved as a teacher by individual

trial-and-errors This echos a popular teacher

development perspective, i.e individualism, in

which individual teachers are believed to be

sufficiently competent in teaching As opposed

to that is the philosophy of collegialism, which

suggests that teachers learn by collaborating,

mostly on pedagogical topics due to the

availability of multiple teaching methods to them Finally, with regards to society reconstruction, at schools, certain instrumental subjects have been selected, for example, mathematics and science are emphasized for social efficiency and economic effectiveness; teaching quality is considered to be a more and more significant factor for successful student learning, and teacher education is believed to play an important role in shaping quality teaching [20] These are several dynamics in the teaching and learning theories which lead to the changes in the requirements for teachers Facing so many versions or perspectives on

TP, a more salient issue of interest for new researchers and teacher trainers is to decide which one is better than the other This is a hard question to answer without investigating further into the functions and goals of teacher education The better perspective should address the agreed functions and goals of education According to Labaree [24], the social purposes to be embedded in all curricula include democratic equality (everyone is equal), social efficiency (education should efficiently serve the needs of the society and prepare the workforce for it), and social mobility (education should help a person to improve or maintain a good social status), which are mutually influential

Judging from this classification, the goal of democracy in teacher education appeared to be dominant in the 1960s and 1970s before social efficiency takes the priority Effective teachers have been defined as having either strong subject knowledge mastery (in the earlier

decades) or strong pedagogical knowledge

mastery (in the later decades) but the increase in

the types and complexity of knowledge for

students has forced them to change from

individualism to collectivism The impact of

social mobility is gradually escalated,

illustrated by the extreme significance of

accountability issues, the increasing value for

education results rather than the qualities it

creates (known as credentialism), and the

adoption of standards of teacher competences in

many countries It is apparent that the political

goals of education are considered more

important than or at least as important as other

similarly essential educational goals such as

students‟ learning and meeting students‟

interests This idea has been reflected by

Cochran-Smith [25] by claiming that teacher

education nowadays is a political sphere

Despite being one important educational goal,

democratic values such as equality and diversity

are not as emphasized in the period of

1980s-2000 as the other two goals, especially in

Western countries

Besides socialization, education has other

goals which are not discussed by Labaree

Biesta‟s classification [26] of education

functions also state qualification and

subjectification (making learner self-sufficient

and independent from external imposition to

perform the work), in which education does not

only serve the society but also the individuals

The three functions of qualification,

socialization and subjectification are

inter-related and inter-influential As regards this

classification, TP in the period from 1960s to

2000 has reflected the movement of dominant

education functions from qualification to

socialization In the earlier stage, teachers were

trained so that they can function in their

profession and later to match the social

requirements on the job The goal of

subjectification (making teachers more

confident in teaching, such as focusing on their

disposition) has also started to be appreciated in

the later decades However, this goal has not

been paid equal attention to other goals

In order to avoid goal bias, it is highly important for curriculum designers to reconsider not only the question of teacher effectiveness and the goal of socialization but also all available resources of content knowledge, education materials and principles (such as human understanding and learning processes, educational goals, curricula, school structures, culture, etc.), contexts and teaching practices [10] In terms of educational goals, socialization and social efficiency/mobility are undoubtedly key goals, but democracy,

qualification, subjectification and students’ learning should also be in focus

In fact, many teacher education and teacher professional development programmes are being improved in the consideration of a more balanced goal system Positively, this effort is named “reprofessionalization” in which important values in the previous professionalization era are altered and improved Specifically, the contents of training are again regarded to be important besides the form or structure of teacher education programmes Although programmes contrast heavily on the contents they offer, based on more comprehensive definitions of education outcomes and competences, the range of contents becomes more balanced and holistic than in the previous stages of teacher education, demanding a higher flexibility and vision of teacher educationers Prepared teachers need to

be masters in subject matter, how students learn, how to represent knowledge, solve problems, test new teaching methods, reflect, and possess a range of dispositions as virtues

No longer can subject matter knowledge or pedagogical knowledge take the utmost position Research-over-oriented teacher training programmes are no longer highly encouraged Instead, other values are recovered

or emerge such as the role of student learning outcomes, contexts, global development and field work in teacher education, besides others From such development, it can be concluded that the role of teacher education in the post-modern world, in general, is not only to create